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Bavaria Beer and Food

26 Jun

I found myself in Bavaria recently. Unfortunately, I’m not really a fan of German food and the continuous stream of meat-and-white-starch (and to my disappointment, so many of the sausages and pork chops just weren’t very good), but a handful of meals or beers were memorable.

Bamberg was a cute city and great place for beer. Schlenkerla is one of the few old breweries still making a rauchbier (smoked beer). Their Marzen tapped straight from a wooden keg was intoxicatingly campfire-smoky in smell, but not bitter or harsh in taste, with a modestly roasted malt and creamy body (and all this for about $3). Delicious and definitely worth a visit.

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Cafe Abseits (tucked away in a residential neighborhood on the opposite side of Bamberg from all the sights) was my favorite bar of the trip. They had a deep beer list and a very laid-back, uncrowded atmosphere and outdoor patio. The Duvel Triple Hop Mosaic was complex– it smelled a bit like basil and tangerines, and had a noticeably warming alcohol flavor (9% ABV) with some funk and a slightly bitter orange aftertaste. It was an A+ for me, and it kept getting more funky as it warmed up.

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Wurzburg had good ies (ice cream), wine (it’s in Franconia, surrounded by vineyards), and a great little breakfast place a friend took me to, with a dumbwaiter, books, and a disco ball. Among other dishes I ordered the famous bavaria breakfast weisswurst (white sausages made with veal, bacon and herbs,  served in broth with a “lye stick” and sweet mustard).

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Augsburg’s Riegele brewery was a good place for a tour, with a chance to taste beer straight out of the fermenter in a nearly pitch-black, cold, sub-basement lit by candlelight. For obvious reasons I didn’t take any photos of that, but their Simcoe specialty ale was more interesting than your average helles:

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And of course Munich. Sure, there were a lot of crisp solid German lagers here… but lagers rarely excite me. The Edelstoff fresh from a wooden keg at Augistinerkeller was good, though.

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Finally, Der Pschorr biergarten (which I’d found on Chowhound) was the one really good German dinner in a sea of fatty-pork-with-white-potatoes-or-kraut meals, with a crisp helles, a great steak with herbed butter, grilled tomatoes, and horseradish, and actual green vegetables… as well as fantastic housemade hazelnut schnapps.

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Eating in Nuremberg, Prague

28 Jan

The food in Eastern Germany and the Czech Republic was heavy meat-and-potatoes fare that had me missing Northern California. Hütt’n in Nuremberg was a cozy little wood-lined pub with maybe eight tables, and is the one restaurant I’d strongly recommend (get there on the early side or make a reservation…).

At Hütt’n, Nuremberger sausages with a mustard-y potato salad (Franconian-style, I believe) and some strong horseradish, washed down with a dark-by-Germany’s-standards beer:

Everything on that plate was delicious, and it was probably my second-favorite meal of the extended trip, after the chicken rice in Singapore.

Their apfelstrudel was okay, but the other dessert, a fried apple fritter of some sort, was better:

The other food was decent, but none of the restaurants were ones I’d tell people to seek out. For example, a middling pretzel split in half and buttered, served for lunch with a bacon-filled pastry:

Venison Goulash with potatoes. Heavy and impossible to finish:

Mixed grilled meat. Still heavy:

I went 0 for 2 on food in Prague: terrible ham sandwiches with mayo, and bad smoked duck and pork. But the hot chocolate (more in the “melted dark chocolate” style) was good:

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Beer in East Germany, Prague

27 Jan

My two favorite beers from a few days in and near Germany (both from restaurant and beer bar Hütt’n in Nuremberg, on Burgstraße — Nuremberg has a reputation for dark-for-Germany beers):

Landbier Dunkel from Brauerie Reh. Coppery, slightly hoppy with no bitterness, very satisfying.

Schwarze Anna from Brauerie Neder. Black, a sort of burnt chocolate taste (though not too heavy), reminded me of a stout.

I also had (though less exciting):
  • Leichtes Landbier from Brauerie Rittmayer
  • A Czech pilsner I didn’t write down the name of, in Prague
Every beer was reasonably good, and a welcome break from a bad beer I’d had in Asia, but nothing blew me away. I was also busy and slightly sick at the end of the trip, though, so beer tasting wasn’t at the top of my list.

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